Paul Simon was last here four years ago, reunited with Art Garfunkel for a reunion show which neatly revisited their past glories. It was pure nostalgia.
Last night, Simon solo, on the other hand was, neatly skewed nostalgia as the 71-year-old American singer-songwriter reminded the audience how the shorter brilliant half of that 60s folk duo kept widening his horizons, kept having hits, and kept joining the dots between music from all over.
A good deal of last night's spirited show was dedicated to Graceland, his 1986 African-inspired album which remains that rarity - an 80s album that still seems like a good idea today. With a cosmopolitan backing band - each a musical Swiss Army Knife for the number of instruments they played - Simon's glorious two hours on stage started out with the sunny township jive of Gumboots, skipped neatly through Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes late in the main set, and got to the Graceland title track in the encore, merging into a Bo Diddley blues number which made for a particularly groovy musicological case study.
Earlier, Simon offered lateral-minded takes on those S&G hits, like a solo acoustic Sound of Silence - as it might have sounded before the epic folk-production it received which made it a hit; likewise, there was a hazy reinterpretation of The Only Living Boy in New York while opener Rufus Wainwright was brought back on to add high Garfunkelesque harmonies to The Boxer later in the piece.
